Categories

Category: Community Activism

On Feb 10, 2013, we held a Symposium in Austin to find a cure to our state’s addiction to mass-incarceration. We learned from the best and most experienced: folks at the grassroots level, from the ACLU of Texas professionals who deal with the Texas Legislature every day and from an ACLU professional who has won victories in Florida, a state not unlike ours. Listen to what they think needs to happen in Texas.

Hope and Naz Mustakim | One Couple’s Battle Within a Broken Immigration System

Howard Simon | Using Electronic Communications to Enact Social Change

Panel Discussion| Key Policies to Focus on in 2013

ACLU of Texas | 75 years of protecting your liberty

Mass-incarceration is not the answer to all of our social problems like drug addiction or undocumented immigration, yet our country spends billions to lock people up instead of investing in real solutions. Want to help us end mass-incarceration in Texas? Be our eyes and ears in your part of the state when you join the Community Action Network. We need people like you to stand with us. Together we can make a difference.

Last week, the Washington D.C. Council announced they would refuse to comply with the federal Immigration and Custom Enforcement’s (ICE) controversial “Secure Communities” deportation program (“S-Comm”). The program, under which ICE requests local law enforcement agencies detain arrested individuals with questionable immigration status so they may be taken into custody by ICE, is an open invitation to racial profiling, undermines trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve, and has led to the deportation of more than a million people, many arrested for low-level, non-violent offenses.

One important fact: The decision to honor an ICE detainer request is completely discretionary. In fact, under federal law such detainers must be voluntary and local governments risk being sued if they detain someone mistakenly or for too long. Furthermore, local police have no business acting as de facto ICE agents. Ultimately, S-Comm drives a wedge between local police and their communities by making undocumented community members afraid to report a crime for fear of being deported. There simply is nothing “secure” about that.

The law that just passed in Washington D.C. will instruct local police to only comply with detention requests for those over 18 who have been convicted of a dangerous crime. Other jurisdictions like Milwaukee have enacted similar laws. Other counties have taken more aggressive measures to keep S-Comm out of their communities. Some, for example, have required ICE to reimburse local government for any costs of complying with a detainer, while others have simply ignored all of ICE’s requests.

So why in Texas do Travis County Jail officials honor every detainer from ICE? Why is it that twice as many of the more than 2,000 total people deported from Travis County were arrested for only a misdemeanor offense? Sheriff Greg Hamilton still believes the detainer requests are mandatory, despite ICE guidance and legal interpretation to the contrary. He also argues that ICE detainers shouldbe complied with because released persons might possibly commit violent crimes. This argument simply cannot justify denying arrestees due process rights, or holding them without proof of crime.

Deaths of Trayvon Martin and a beaten Iraqi mother in San Diego are extreme examples of the need for civil rights dialogue in America. We started that much needed dialogue at our day long Civil Right Conference last month. A civil rights coalition made up of civil rights organizations from around the state came together to discuss Civil rights post 9/11, immigrants’ rights, and Criminal Law Reform. Hundreds of concerned Texans gathered for an entire day to listen. The day was topped off with a moving speech from Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of Democracy Now!

Check out our full recap:

Oscar Chacon, Executive Director of the National Alliance of Latin American and Caribbean Communities, kicked off the conference with a civil rights overview.

Understanding Civil Rights Post 9/11

Rick Halperin of SMU said, “Free speech in this country stops at the sidewalk of the supreme court” during his presentation on the right to protest and free speech. One Twitter follower wrote: “Rick Halperin of SMU killer speech on US history of oppression and free speech.”

Matt Simpson [Pictured middle] from the ACLU of Texas followed with a great speech about national security and privacy issues post 9/11.

Immigrants’ Rights

Baldo Garza of LULAC moderated the immigrants rights panel.

Krystal Gomez [Pictured far left] from the ACLU of Texas presented on detention and deportation. Brent Wilkes [Pictured middle] from LULAC followed with a talk on immigration reform. Geoff Hoffman [Pictured far right] from the UH Law Center Immigration Clinic ended the discussion with a presentation about local, state, and federal enforcement.

Tribute to Cesar Chavez

Lunch was served during a tribute to César Chávez by Frank Curiel who was once Chávez’s bodyguard and close friend.

Our twitter followers wrote: “Things I didn’t know about Cesar Chavez: he was an environmentalist and vegetarian.”

And “Great perspective on Cesar Chavez life & struggle of farm workers by Frank Curiel.”

Dave Atwood [Pictured far left] from HPJC and TCADP closed the discussion with a speech about the death penalty in Texas. Dave stated, “The death penalty on its way out. Except in Ohio and Southern states.”

Amy Goodman

The room filled up for the keynote address by Amy Goodman, host and executive producer of Democracy Now!

Amy urged listeners to actively fight for civil rights by quoting Barack Obama, “I don’t disagree with anything you say but you’ll have to make me do it.” If you missed her speech watch it here now.

As the list above shows, ALEC’s model legislation has a real world negative impact on the civil liberties of all Americans, puts more people needlessly behind bars, undermines our democracy, and makes communities across the country less safe.

The ACLU of Texas works to protect the civil liberties of all Texans, but we need your help. Follow our work and join our Community Action Network – together we can ensure that civil liberties, not corporate profits, prevail at the Texas Capitol.

The use of the death penalty in Texas, and the US, is on the decline. But, to finally rid our state and our nation of this practice, we need to come together as a community and raise our voices. Join the ACLU of Texas and numerous other civil rights organizations at a community conference this Saturday, March 31, in Houston titled Civil Rights in the 21st Century: Uniting Communities for Justice. The death penalty will be just one of multiple civil rights issues that will be discussed. We’d love to have you join us.

Lock ‘em up and throw away the key! While this “tough on crime” rhetoric may sound good on the campaign trail, in reality it undermines public safety, wastes valuable tax dollars, and violates the basic human rights of countless Texans. Here are just a few of the real world implications of our failed criminal justice system:

Between 1980 and 2004, Texas’ prison population increased by 566%; during the same time corrections spending increased by 1,600%.

In Texas, African Americans make up just 12% of the population, but account for 44% of the total prison and jail population.

Texas spends seven times more on incarceration than on higher education.

Non-violent and drug offenses account for 81% of all new inmates.

Texas’ imprisonment rate (691 per 100,000 residents) is three times higher than that of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Of the roughly 170,000 people in Texas prisons, about 90,000, more than half, are classified as non-violent.

Cost to keep one person in prison per day in Texas: between $40-50. Cost to keep one person on probation per day in Texas: $2

Incarceration doesn’t stop drug use. States with higher rates of incarceration for drug violations actually show higher, not lower, rates of drug use. That’s because incarceration without rehabilitation results in a revolving prison door. By contrast, rehabilitation returns a person to society able to function better than before and less likely to re-offend.

Texas spends $300 million a year to incarcerate non-violent drug users.

Evidence shows that all races use drugs at about the same rate, but Texas arrests and incarcerates a disproportionate number of people of color for drug possession. In Texas, African Americans are imprisoned five times more than whites, and Latinos at almost twice the rate of whites.

Tough on crime has failed, it is time for us to be smart on crime. As we have discussed on this blog before, Texas has made great strides toward a smarter criminal justice system – but there is still a long way to go.

Join us, and numerous other human rights organizations and activists on March 31st for a community conference titled Civil Rights in the 21st Century: Uniting Communities for Justice. We’ll discuss over-incarceration, and, more importantly, come together as a community to strategize and implement a plan to end this expensive, abusive, and dangerous practice.

The fight for immigrants’ rights is one of this century’s great civil rights challenges.

The Supreme Court has consistently ruled that the authority to regulate immigration rests exclusively with the federal government and has prohibited state and local enforcement of federal immigration law without federal authorization. Moreover, local enforcement of immigration law often leads to racial profiling and drives a wedge between police and the communities they serve, making everyone less safe.

The United States should not be a country that arrests people without cause and detains them without access to counsel or family. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happens to thousands of immigrants caught up in raids, transferred into detention centers, and pressured into signing removal orders without being able to consult attorneys or family. Locking up people for years without hearings is illegal. The constitutional guarantee of due process applies to all people in this country, not just to U.S. citizens.

Join the ACLU of Texas and numerous other civil rights organizations at a community conference in Houston titled Civil Rights in the 21st Century: Uniting Communities for Justice. This conference will provide an overview of issues relating to immigrants’ right and, more importantly, will unite our community. Our goal is to use this conference as an opportunity to form a broad and diverse coalition of organizations and concerned community members dedicated to ensuring Constitutional protections for all Texans. Join us!

We have all heard the stories. Children given criminal tickets for throwing a paper airplane in class, using profanity in school, talking back to a teacher … the list goes on. While this behavior must not be condoned, I hope we can all agree that sending children into the juvenile and criminal justice systems for minor disciplinary transgressions is extreme (and counterproductive).

In addition to the use of these extreme tactics for controlling childish misbehavior, we also know that students of color and special education students are disproportionately impacted. Just last week, the U.S. Department of Education released new data showing that African American students were 3 ½ times more likely than their white peers to be expelled. Sadly, appalling data like this is nothing new.

Well … what can we do about it? Join the ACLU of Texas and numerous other civil rights organizations at a community conference in Houston titled Civil Rights in the 21st Century: Uniting Communities for Justice. This conference will provide an overview of the school-to-prison pipeline and, more importantly, will unite our community. Our goal is to use this conference to as an opportunity to form a broad and diverse coalition of organizations and concerned community members dedicated to sealing, once and for all, the school-to-prison pipeline. Join us!

Want to do something to stop these abuses? Join the ACLU of Texas and numerous other civil rights organizations at a community conference titled Civil Rights in the 21st Century: Uniting Communities for Justice. At this conference, we will join together to expose Islamophobia and to learn how we can ensure that all Texans are able to exercise their faith, or no faith at all, freely and without government intrusion.

We hope this conference will serve as a public education event, but our main goal is to use this gathering as an opportunity to connect community activists and look for ways to coordinate our work to better ensure that all Texans’ realize their fundamental human rights.

Over the next three weeks, this blog will cover the topics that will be highlighted at the event. Want to learn more about the conference and find out how to register? Please visit www.civilrightscoalition.net. We hope to see you there!